A Japanese worker at the U.S. Navy base in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, has filed a damages suit against the Japanese government over an injury he sustained at work in 1999, sources said Tuesday.
Mikio Ishikawa, 45, filed the suit with the Yokosuka Branch of the Yokohama District Court, seeking about 43 million yen in damages from the state.
He said in the suit that the U.S. military did not pay sufficient attention to safety and that the state should compensate him for the accident in accordance with a special civil law, according to the sources.
According to the suit, Ishikawa, who began working at the base in 1978, suffered cuts on three fingers on his left hand and fractured four fingers on his right while using wire to replace damaged parts of a forklift on April 14, 1999.
The state argues the plaintiff's injury was caused by his own carelessness, the sources said.